Labor & Employment Law

Union Members Keep Marching for California?s Future and Economic Justice

By Mike Hall

On March 5, Irene Gonzalez, a Los Angeles juvenile probation officer and AFSCME Local 685 member, set out with a diverse group of other union members for 250-mile, 48-day March for California’s Future.

Sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), AFSCME and a coalition of labor, education and faith groups, the march is drawing attention to the state’s budget crisis and the devastating impact of budget cuts on Californians now and into the future.

Last week, Gonzalez writes on the California Progress Report, that as the march entered Fresno

we came upon a 10-block long area of homeless people sleeping in the middle of the sidewalk flanked by rows and rows of tents, their only possessions being their sleeping bags and the clothes on their backs.

They are surrounded on all sides by boarded up homes. The empty, unoccupied houses, the foreclosed properties that many of these men and women once occupied, look down on them daily and seem to taunt them.

They have nowhere to go; no jobs, no prospects, and apparently no help of any kind. Where are the public services that could give these men and women a fresh start and a helping hand? The retraining and rehab centers? The medical clinics? The supportive services?

Click here to read her entire report.

Seven marchers, including five current or retired CFT members, are making the entire march. Along the way, hundreds of firefighters, nurses, in-home care workers, students and police officers have joined and will join the marchers for parts of their 250-mile trek to the state capitol in Sacramento.

Many are filing reports on the march’s website. Jenn Laskin, a Watsonville teacher and one of the core seven writes:

For me, one of the beautiful aspects of this march is the collaboration between labor groups, community groups and individuals, religious institutions and pets — literally…we have been visited by many dogs on the march. While our philosophies and tactics may be challenging at times, we all want the same thing: basic needs to be met for everyone, a fair and just distribution of wealth and an end to budget gridlock and non-human priorities in Sacramento

In Merced, Jim Miller, a teacher from San Diego, along with some Los Angeles City College students who were spending part of their spring break on the march, spoke to a group of students at Merced College about why they were on the road for economic justice.

I told them that we were choosing what kind of future would be out there for their children. I told them that it was time to choose between prisons and schools, time to raise revenue rather than fire teachers, raise fees, and shut the doors to opportunity in California.

Then the students and I told them that we came to the Central Valley to start a discussion with our forgotten neighbors, those people the big cities on the coast tend to ignore or disdain. Afterwards they thanked us for coming to Merced, for thinking of coming to the valley in the first place, for marching for them.

Click here to read all the updates.

Says CFT President Mary Hittelman:

Democracy is no longer in charge of Sacramento; instead, ideology is in control, benefiting the richest and most powerful while dismantling the California Dream for the rest of us.

We don’t have to let California go down that drain. March with us to restore the promise of the golden state.

The march ends April 21 with a huge rally at the state capitol in Sacramento.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).